At Unity Secondary School, Literature is only offered to the Lower Secondary Students (Secondary 1 and Secondary 2). The Secondary 1 students are not doing Literature this term. Instead, they will only be doing Literature in Term 3 whereby students will read the text “Emily of Emerald Hill”. As for the Secondary 2 students, they are currently studying the text “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. I am assigned to teach Secondary 2 Literature—1 Express class and 1 Normal Academic class. It is a challenge to teach Literature in the school because many of the students have the mentality that they will not do Literature in Upper Secondary. Most of the students are also rather weak in their command of the English Language. In addition, some of the students do not like the subject and find it boring because they hate to read and write. For Literature lessons, the teachers will explain difficult concepts/themes and after which, students would be given worksheets/handouts to do so as to reinforce their learning. In addition, to increase the students’ participation, students are given a project to complete over the March Holidays where they have to create artifacts based on the novel they are currently studying and they will also need to present their work through an exhibition after the March Holidays (Term 2 Week 2). It is definitely a challenging task to teach Literature to the Secondary 2 Normal Academic students because many of them do not like the subject and because they do not read the text, they face difficulty in understanding the novel.
"The Secondary 1 students are not doing Literature this term. Instead, they will only be doing Literature in Term 3 whereby students will read the text “Emily of Emerald Hill”. - that sounds like a big jump and little is being done to build schema - "many of them do not like the subject and because they do not read the text, they face difficulty in understanding the novel." - do you think it has to do with text selection?
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